This I Believe

I purchased some triangular shaped cookies which are prepared in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purum, a story of children dancing and making happy sounds with a greger (noisemaker). The historical context surroundings the holiday are the good deeds of Queen Esther who persuaded an arch villain (Heyman) to stop persecuting the Jews. Heyman wore a triangular hat and so we figuratively eat his hat. It makes no sense to me but the cookies are delicious and I ate the whole package in one sitting.

Eating cookies is something which produces guilt and indigestion as well as long term health problems. Having done in the whole batch I am faced with the difficulty of facing my mirror for the morning shave. I have a cookie hangover and I must resolve not to let the child in me takeover my good judgement in the future. Such resolutions have been made before and fade in conviction before the apricot filled cultural revisit called a Haman Tashen. My only hope is to mentally slap my wrist as I reach for the cookies at Stop and Shop. The Atkin’s Diet and my Cardiologist and the scale, which must be revisited, are confronting the familiar and haunting flavor of my reward.

I write this embarrassing moment so that I can remember that cookies are not love and they will be remembered long after the good taste has past.

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Top 100 Essays USB Drive

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.